Ecuador chief: Deadly revolt by police an attempted coup

QUITO, Ecuador - It was the biggest test of Rafael Correa's nearly 4-year-old presidency, a bloody trial by fire for a tenacious politician whose popular government had brought relative calm to a chronically unstable country.

The Ecuadorean leader called the police revolt, which left three dead, dozens injured and briefly paralyzed this Andean nation, a coup attempt. Not an outlandish claim for a country that had eight presidents in 10 years before Correa won office.

Correa's kindred leftist presidents, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, even accused the United States of pulling the strings behind the insurrection at an emergency meeting of South American leaders on Friday.

But skeptical analysts said that Thursday's tumult appeared instead to be a revolt that spiraled out of control by hundreds of modestly paid police officers protesting cuts in benefits.

"You can't dismiss the possibility that some opposition figures knew about it and supported it. But if it was a coup attempt, it was hugely amateurish," said Adam Isacson of the liberal Washington Office on Latin America think tank.

Analysts also tended to agree that Correa, a U.S.- and European-educated economist, emerged strengthened from the first violent challenge to his presidency in a country with a long history of short-lived governments and of meddling by Washington.

The armed forces high command stood by Correa, as did his most powerful political rival - and governments in the region of every political stripe.

As life quickly returned to normal across Ecuador on Friday, Correa spoke by phone for 10 minutes with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who "encouraged an ongoing, rapid and peaceful restoration of order," said Clinton's spokesman, P.J. Crowley.